THEY have always been an ensemble company, these Devils, and if they’re going to enjoy ultimate success again this spring, they’ll do so again as a unit.

That’s reality at the Exit of Champions.

But at the same time, it is also true that when they skated onto the Meadowlands ice for last night’s opening game of the Eastern semis, one athlete’s name had been elevated above the title on the marquee:

Scott Stevens.

As in, Scott Stevens and the Devils against the Maple Leafs.

This isn’t a case of the captain seeking attention. This isn’t the same as when the Stone Ponies, for instance, officially became Linda Ronstadt and the Stone Ponies.

This is a case where public (and media) perception of the Devils has largely been funneled through a Stevens prism in the aftermath of his violent KOs of Hurricanes Shane Willis and Ron Francis a year after his path of destruction eliminated, among others, Eric Lindros and Daymond Langkow, en route to hoisting both the Stanley Cup and the Conn Smythe Trophy.

Still, even though Stevens never intended to court a higher profile than any of his teammates, that’s most certainly what he has reaped in becoming an overnight phenomenon after 19 years in the NHL. And so, entering a series in which he is clearly in the spotlight, if not in Toronto’s figurative cross-hairs, you wonder whether all this attention will somehow change him … or the team’s delicate dynamic.

You wonder.

But at the same time, the Devils don’t.

“I have no concerns whatsoever,” Lou Lamoriello said before last night’s match. “In the first place, Scott is playing no differently today than he was yesterday, last week or last year.

“Second, the respect his teammates have for him on a day-in, day-out basis is unshakable. They know that nothing from outside the team will affect or change him in any way. Scott himself doesn’t worry about anything other than focusing on his job.

“I don’t worry about things I can’t control, and one of the things I can’t control is what the media or fans or people around the league say or think. To be completely honest, if I hadn’t been asked this question, I never would have even thought about it.

“Our preparation for this series has not been affected in the slightest by outside forces,” the GM said. “This has not been a distraction to us. But who knows? Maybe it will be a distraction to other people.

“Maybe the focus changes to somewhere it might not have been.”

Though everyone remembers the details of last year’s six-game series between the teams a little bit differently, no one is having trouble remembering the physical annihlation the Maple Leafs suffered from beginning to end of the confrontation. There’s no question that Stevens enters this second-round reprise as a dragon the Leafs must slay, just as they must slay Bobby Holik-who a year ago terrorized Mats Sundin-in order to have a chance to move into the conference finals.

Toronto would love to throw the puck into Stevens’ corner and then pound him after he’s forced to turn and play it. But Martin Brodeur’s ability to range from the net to play dump-ins all but negates that standard strategy. In fact, the goaltender has said that his primary motivation for playing the puck is to save his defensemen from such physical abuse.

“I don’t really care about giving the puck away. Playing the puck, the most important thing is that my defensemen don’t get hit all night,” Brodeur said. “If the puck is dumped in and I come out to play it, the forecheckers have to slow down because they can’t run me, and if they do, it’s a penalty.

“That’s why I’ll go out whenever I can. When I don’t, and one of my defenseman takes a hit, I feel really bad. Over the course of a game or the season or a playoff series, my being able to play the puck really saves my ‘D’ from taking a lot of hits.”

Still, Stevens won’t altogether be able to avoid hits. He understands that. He did, after all, withstand a 50-minute Carolina cavalry charge after sending Ron Francis to the canvas in the early minutes of Game 3. The question is whether the captain will, with the whole world watching, feel undue pressure to stamp his imprint on this series, and thus play outside of himself.

The question is whether having his name above the title will somehow change Stevens.

“I haven’t talked to him about it and I don’t have any plans to,” Larry Robinson said. “There’s nothing in what I’ve seen from Scott either in the last series or preparing for this one that concerns me in that regard.

“I’ll tell you this, though: if there truly is one name above the title, I’m glad it’s Scott’s, and not mine.”